Product Review: Halfpops

The folks at Halfpops sent me a really big box of samples the other week.

Folks at Halfpops: if I didn’t have plenty of friends to share with, I would be very upset with you. How in the world is a mere mortal supposed to summon up the willpower to not eat all of these, instantly?

For those of you not familiar with the company, allow me to explain. Halfpops are bags full of popcorn that’s only been (you guessed it) half-popped. So it’s still really crunchy. And tasty.
Halfpops come in two flavors currently, Natural Butter & Ocean Salt and Natural Aged White Cheddar. They’re looking into a third flavor, which will either be Kettle Corn, Chipotle & Lime, or Jalepeño & Aged Cheddar Cheese (you can vote on their site, Kettle Corn is in the lead for now).

As you might have guessed from the flavor names, these are NOT dairy-free. Not even close. But they are gluten-free, which is why we’re talking about them here.

If you can tolerate dairy and like crunchy things, I think you’ll find these quite addictive. Personally I was partial to the more traditional Butter & Salt flavor. It reminded me of a time, not so long ago, when I shared a very small apartment with a very tall friend who liked to cook.

Inevitably if he was at the stove when I got home, the apartment would smell fantastic. And for the first few months I would ask, “Oh my gosh, what are you cooking?” … but eventually I stopped asking. The answer was always the same: “Oh, some X or Y or Z. In butter.” The Halfpops taste like that. Like delicious, delicious butter. Plus crunch and salt.

For those of you who don’t live in the Seattle metro area, Halfpops can be tough-to-impossible to find in local stores. Happily they are currently offering free shipping, and you can order by the case online. The two-ounce bags are sharable, and perfect for school lunches (for a child old enough to handle popcorn, I wouldn’t feed these to little one), mid-afternoon snacking, or even sneaking into the movie theater — although your crunching might earn you some jealous stares.